Businesses recognize the commercial value of their data and seek reliable, cost-effective ways to protect the information stored on their computer networks while minimizing impact on productivity. A company might back up critical computing systems such as databases, file servers, web servers, virtual machines, and so on as part of a daily, weekly, or monthly maintenance schedule. The company may similarly protect computing systems used by its employees, such as those used by an accounting department, marketing department, engineering department, and so forth. Given the rapidly expanding volume of data under management, companies also continue to seek innovative techniques for managing data growth, for example by migrating data to lower-cost storage over time, reducing redundant data, pruning lower priority data, etc.
As virtual machines have become increasingly popular for everyday computing, protecting virtual machine data has also become more important. However, uploading virtual machine data to cloud storage, and likewise backing up cloud-based virtual machines, can be slow, which impacts productivity as well as putting some disaster recovery scenarios at risk. A more streamlined approach is desirable.